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Pasha Eaton
This is exactly right.
Paul Marquardt
Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month.
Pasha Eaton
Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it.
Paul Marquardt
Five, my mom uses it.
Hannah Smith
Are you playing me off?
Pasha Eaton
That's what's happening, right?
Paul Marquardt
Okay, give it a try.
Hannah Smith
@Mintmobile.Com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan.
Pasha Eaton
$15 per month. Equ new customer offer first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com hi, I'm Morgan.
Morgan
I have three kids. I have an IQ of 160. I work with the cops.
Pasha Eaton
You're a cop?
Morgan
No, but they do sign my paychecks. Kaitlin Olsen returns in High Potential, the number one drama.
Sam Bowman
She was abducted.
Pasha Eaton
You knew that already, didn't you?
Morgan
Yeah, I thought it'd be nice to let you have this one. And one of the best new crime procedurals.
Pasha Eaton
You're waiting on me to leave so you can poke around without a warrant, aren't you? Yeah.
Morgan
High potential. New Tuesdays 10 9th century on ABC and stream on Hulu. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech@lenovo.com, dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming and performance that won't quit. So you can push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high quality streaming with Intel Wi Fi 6e and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search power up@lenovo.com.
Pasha Eaton
This.
Hannah Smith
Story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Pasha Eaton
Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Pasha Eaton.
Hannah Smith
I'm Hannah Smith. If you've been enjoying the show, if you would do us a favor and go over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen and give us a rating and review, we would love you for it. Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
Today I am so excited because I'm telling you a story that you know absolutely nothing about.
Hannah Smith
I literally have no idea. And I know you've been working really hard on it over the last and there's been moments where you're like, oh my gosh, I just had this wild phone call and I'm like, what? What is it?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, I'm looking forward to telling you this story because not only is it a heist story, but I also at the end of the episode, we'll Hear from someone who has a really important relationship to one of the people involved, and I think brings an important layer to the story outside of the crime.
Hannah Smith
Cool.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
So how did you first find this story?
Pasha Eaton
Great question. I think I remember because, as you know, I, like, have 1 billion tabs open.
Hannah Smith
Three now.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Three notepads that I'm trying to stay organized in at once. And you have to sort of stack them on top of each other to see my actual list.
Hannah Smith
Great system.
Pasha Eaton
Yes. But I found this because I think we had recently interviewed Ellen, who was the victim of a kidnapping.
Morgan
Yes.
Hannah Smith
Great episode. If you haven't listened to that yet, go listen to that episode.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. And so I was thinking, wow, okay, what would it be like to be held hostage? Like, really trying to put myself in that space. And so I started thinking about bank robberies. And, like, this is what we see in the movies is everybody get down, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
And, you know, you and I had previously interviewed a bank robber before, which was an interesting story. We interviewed a bank robber and the FBI agent who tracked him down. We interviewed that agent again on this show. His name is Mark Rossi.
Hannah Smith
Yeah. That was such an interesting interview with the bank robber. I remember him because he was so honest about it. He told us exactly what happened in his life and his mindset and walked us through the whole thing.
Pasha Eaton
And there were so many layers of his story that, you know, it was wrong for him to do that, which he knows, but you begin to understand. And that is, for me, one of the more fascinating aspects of, like, quote, unquote, crime and people who commit crimes is. Does the ability to do good and bad lie in everyone? Probably, yes.
Hannah Smith
Oh, yeah. Bank Robbie is this interesting thing that has sort of this romanticized version of, like, early America, and you have, like, Bonnie and Clyde. But then there's also this aspect of sort of, like, desperation, like someone who, you know, they're like, oh, I could just take this money right now, and that would solve my problems. So it's very interesting psychologically.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, recently, I saw a headline where a guy went into a bank with lemon juice all over his face. And he had convinced himself. Yes. And he had convinced himself that the lemon juice made him invisible to the point where he was, like, winking at security cameras like, you'll never catch me. You'll never catch me. And then they, of course, do catch him, and he is shocked. And I'm not remembering the exact diagnosis he was given, but it was something along the lines of, like, overconfidence what? It wasn't like something, you know, I don't know how to put bananas more serious than that. It was like literally. You have just managed to convince yourself of this oi a man. If you could imagine. Okay, so this is the story of the Trench Coat robbers. They are a notorious duo of bank robbers. And I'm just going to get right into it. All right, all right. So it's 6:30pm on February 10, 1997. We're in Lakewood, Washington, which is just outside of Tacoma. And we're looking right at Seafirst Bank. Now the bank is closed. It just closed. But inside, three women are still working. They are wrapping up for the evening, getting cash from the day, stored safely away. And two men approach the bank. They're in trench coats. One of them pulls a small L shaped tool out of his pocket and picks the lock. The door clicks open and they're inside immediately, guns pointed at the people who are still working at the bank. One person zip ties everybody and the other gets ahold of the cash. So they order these people into the vault, they restrain them and they begin to fill duffel bag after duffel bag with cash. They're in and out in less than 10 minutes with nearly $4.5 million carrying.
Hannah Smith
Four point. Like you gotta think that's heavy.
Pasha Eaton
It's heavy. Yeah.
Hannah Smith
Okay. Wow.
Pasha Eaton
As soon as they're gone, one of the women breaks free from a zip tie and she sounds the alarm. So immediately the FBI is involved. They don't know who these men are, but they're pretty sure that this is the work of the Trenchcoat Robbers. A notorious duo that has been on a cross country crime spree evading capture for decades.
Hannah Smith
Okay, see, I was going to say this feels like a clean operation, like a well oiled machine. In and out, quickly, zip tying. So it's making sense now that this is a notorious duo.
Pasha Eaton
Yes, and this is their biggest ever heist. And it would be their last. So I'm actually going to take you back to the beginning.
Hannah Smith
Ooh, okay. Wow. I love the way you're telling this.
Pasha Eaton
Okay, great. In this case, the beginning is all the way back in 1974. William Arthur Kirkpatrick, known as Billy and Ray Bowman, managed to walk out of a Kmart together with 38 stolen records. The booster duo was arrested. Their names are written by hand in one another's arrest records. But they never end up doing any time for this theft. Now boosting is taking something and reselling it. Right? Okay, okay, yeah. So they're like a budding crime duo in the 70s. They're teenagers, Billy and Billy and Ray.
Hannah Smith
Billy and Ray, Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
So Billy's from Havilland, Minnesota, and raised from Kansas City. But they meet at what you might call their first real job, boosting records for none other than Kansas City mob boss Anthony J. Cartarella, otherwise known as Tiger Cartarella, the owner of Tiger Records.
Hannah Smith
Oh, wow.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
And also a mob boss.
Pasha Eaton
Also a mob boss. Wow.
Hannah Smith
That feels like that could be a whole story right there for sure.
Pasha Eaton
So Tiger Records is a place where you could go and get the latest and greatest hits for a fraction of the price, much cheaper than you could anywhere else, because the inventory was stolen by boosters like Billy and Ray.
Hannah Smith
Oh, my gosh.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
Wow. Okay.
Pasha Eaton
So they really passed their sales onto the customer, which you have to appreciate. So you're going to be hearing a series of clips in the episode. The first person we're going to hear from for the really the majority of the episode is a former ATF agent by the name of Paul Marquardt. And Paul is now retired. However, he does sometimes still do contract work for the atf.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Paul Marquardt
And then what they would do is they had these trench coats that had hidden pockets inside and they would go out to small towns in Kansas and go to like any place that would sell records, and one of them would distract the clerk and while the other one's sticking albums in their coat. And they were doing a lot of this in the wintertime because then it wasn't suspicious. I'm wearing a trench coat. And then they would just offload all those record albums to Tiger's record shop.
Hannah Smith
Okay. We're talking albums. We're not talking CDs, we're talking big, big albums. And they're putting them in their trench coats.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
Wow.
Pasha Eaton
Modern day Taylor Deluxe. Okay, so Billy and Ray are stealing these records in droves. And as we now know, this is not a small time operation. They're making some serious cash and they're dipping their toes into the world of organized crimes.
Hannah Smith
So wait, can I just clarify real quick? They're working for Tiger Records, Right? Like they're going around to other stores stealing albums and then selling them to Tiger Records?
Pasha Eaton
Basically, yes.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
Okay. Yeah. And that is how they met. So I wasn't able to go back further than that, but that's how they met and became friends.
Hannah Smith
They were immediately besties. We have a lot of comments.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So I went onto Reddit to see if anyone had anything to say about Tiger Records because it has since closed. And I found a thread on the Kansas City subreddit with few locals who remembered it pretty well. There were rumors of very tight security. People on ladders looking down at the shop, making sure no one was stealing from them, you know, much more than you would have a normal record shop. So I have no idea if anything else was going on there. But I can speculate that Tiger Carterella was in more than the record business.
Hannah Smith
I see.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So for Billy and Ray, this is a good gig. There's easy money, no consequences. So far, I mean, they've been arrested, but didn't do any time. And then actually, in 1977, Cartarello was convicted for selling stolen records, and he was sentenced to five years and was also fined. I imagine if you're Tiger Carterella in this moment, you're like, okay, arrest me for stolen records. I don't know everything he was doing, but that seems like a deal I would take if I were him.
Hannah Smith
Like, he was maybe doing other things, but he got caught for the records.
Pasha Eaton
So this is probably, you know, not a time when you want to continue working for an alleged mob boss. The people are onto him, and you're kind of small time by comparison. I can also speculate that if you're a billion Ray, and you're working for Tiger Records and Tiger Carterella, you're starting to sort of see wealth from, you know, maybe that is obtained by a means that is not good, but that you might be able to replicate. So I'm also.
Hannah Smith
And they're in Kansas.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So Tiger Records in Kansas City. Billy didn't live there, but they would travel all around and connect and do this work together boost. Yeah.
Hannah Smith
I can totally see how they would think, like, we could have a exciting life as opposed to going and getting a 9 to 5 over here. Our lives could be much more glamorous.
Pasha Eaton
Totally. And, I mean, I wasn't a teenager in the 70s. I was still dead, if you will. But if your friends are, like, flipping burgers for minimum wage and you're making big bucks boosting records, that'd be pretty hard to stop doing. And I'm especially picturing, like, if I were a teenage boy, like, this is a good time.
Hannah Smith
Appealing. Like it. It's. Yeah, yeah.
Pasha Eaton
Feels quite victimless, too. A record like, who cares? Who cares?
Hannah Smith
I will say for Tiger, the mob boss, if the record store is his front, then he really screwed up by having your front not be clean.
Pasha Eaton
Right.
Hannah Smith
If there's anything I've learned from watching the Wire, your front business has to Be like, upstanding.
Pasha Eaton
Oh, my God. The Wire. I'm Michael Scott with the Wire. I don't understand a word of it. A side note, Tiger Carterella went missing in 1984. He was missing for two weeks and then found dead in the trunk of his own car. So it didn't end well for him. But back to our budding trench coat robbers. In September of 1982, two young men, Billy and Ray, decide to rob a bank in Annapolis, Missouri. They pick the lock while the bank is closed, and once inside, point a gun at the bank tellers and demand access to the cash. They're wearing wigs, sunglasses and a hat. I wasn't there while they were planning this, but it seems like they may have watched some movies about it. And, you know, it's a pretty unimaginative disguise, but it works. And they take off in a stolen car with around $60,000 and begin planning their next heist.
Hannah Smith
That's pretty big, especially for the 80s.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. So, you know, boosting records is out. Bank robbery is in.
Hannah Smith
Yeah, yeah. More lucrative, sounds like.
Pasha Eaton
Totally. And in 1983, Ray starts dating a woman named Sheryl Clark. And he tells her that he's unemployed, sometimes works as a locksmith. You know, convenient. Two truths and a lie. But he is a big spender, and that's not lost on Cheryl. They go to a lot of fancy dinners, they ride in limousines, he buys expensive clothes. He gives her cash, more than you would make as a sometimes unemployed locksmith. And he would leave for weeks at a time. And we on the other side of this know that Ray was meeting up with Billy. And they would go to another location, stake out a bank, and then rob the bank and go their separate ways again. So Ray was living in Kansas City and Billy was living in Minnesota.
Hannah Smith
And so Cheryl didn't know that he was even friends with or maybe hadn't even met Ray.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, so. So Cheryl was dating Ray, and at some point, she becomes aware that he has a friendship with this guy Billy. But she doesn't know that they're robbing banks together.
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
So in 1987, they robbed the Hawkeye bank in Des Moines, Iowa, making out with nearly 50 grand. And this robbery starts differently than the others. At this time, Billy and Ray have set their sights on one of the bank employees. And they essentially stalk him and figure out where he lives. And then at 3:30 in the morning on November 6, 1987, they break into his house. They hold the man, his wife and child at gunpoint, zip tie them, and with all three in tow, they go to the bank where the man worked.
Hannah Smith
Wow.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So it's definitely an escalation, right?
Hannah Smith
For sure. Because now you're kidnapping three people.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. And, you know, not that zip tying them at their place of work was any sort of better, but you can see this, like, brazenness, right?
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
Like, you're gonna go to this guy's home, you're gonna follow him, you're gonna take his wife and kid.
Hannah Smith
Yeah. That feels much more violent. But I can imagine, like they've been getting away with it. So they're feeling a little more confident perhaps.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, totally. And so they go to this bank where the man works and they steal 50 grand. Right. And then they go their separate ways. And what they're doing after these robberies is they're going their separate ways and on their way home, because they're driving, they're stopping at different banks and they're making deposits into bank safe deposit boxes.
Hannah Smith
Okay, different bank safe deposit boxes. Like across the country?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
Do they co own these or are they their own separate boxes?
Pasha Eaton
They're their own separate boxes. They were relatively careful, which I'll get into more later, not to make their sort of association super clear.
Hannah Smith
Gotcha.
Morgan
Hi, I'm Morgan. I have three kids. I have an IQ of 160. I work with the cops.
Sam Bowman
You're a cop?
Morgan
No, but they do sign my paychecks. Kaitlin Olsen returns in high potential, the number one drama.
Paul Marquardt
She was abducted.
Pasha Eaton
You knew that already, didn't you?
Morgan
Yeah, I thought it'd be nice to let you have this one. And one of the best new crime procedurals.
Pasha Eaton
You're waiting on me to leave so you can poke around without a warrant, aren't you? Yeah.
Morgan
High potential. New Tuesdays, 10. 9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Saba and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty, which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results, and then you just go out and live your life.
Pasha Eaton
Meaningful Beauty.
Morgan
Confidence is beautiful. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com in the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech@lenovo.com dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming and performance that won't quite. So you can push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high quality streaming with Intel Wi Fi 6e and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search power up@lenovo.com lenovo.
Hannah Smith
Lenovo.
Pasha Eaton
And so in 1988, they have a failed robbery. They attempt to rob First Wisconsin bank, but the vault had already been closed for the night and they left all the employees tied up in the basement and took off with nothing. So I don't know exactly what went wrong there, but things are moving really quickly. They're already onto their next robbery and there are robberies in between these that I don't even, we don't even really quite know about because they weren't fully traced back to them until later.
Hannah Smith
But somehow they couldn't get maybe into the vault or whatever it is. So this was a failed robbery.
Pasha Eaton
This was a complete failure.
Hannah Smith
And are they wearing trench coats every time?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, so I should mention they're wearing trench coats, wigs, mustaches, fedora hats, I mean, sunglasses.
Hannah Smith
Like they just stick to the same get up.
Pasha Eaton
And there's two of them and the same MO they get into the bank. They either linger as it's closing and stay behind, or they pick the lock and get in right as it's opening or right as it's closing. So their whole goal is usually that there's no one else in the bank besides them and the employees. And so in 1989, they rob another branch of the First Wisconsin bank. But this time they're successful and they take over $400,000.
Hannah Smith
Dang.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So once again, they return to their separate lives. They stop on the way home, make these deposits into safe deposit boxes all over the country. And some of the cash they do take with them. But you know, how much cash does a man really need? And from what I've learned about Ray, he never told anyone close to him that he was robbing banks or doing anything illegal. There were definitely times where he was sort of openly not transparent, but he did not tell the people close to him. Billy was not as tight lipped, Okay.
Hannah Smith
I was gonna say, this agreement they have where they meet up and they'll rob a bank and then they go and they do their separate things. It really requires a lot of trust in each other. I don't know how long it is between bank robberies, like a year or something. They're just gonna trust the Other person is like, keeping their lip zipped. And in some ways, it's sort of like this sweet friendship. Like, we have this secret. It works.
Pasha Eaton
It's like, I have so much dirt on you. Don't you dare that.
Hannah Smith
Don't you dare. So then. But what happens with Billy?
Pasha Eaton
Right, so Billy is dating a woman named Myra Penny. And he discloses a little more to her than Ray ever does to anyone close to him. But more on that later. Okay, so Cheryl and Ray broke up in 1989. And Cheryl would later say that when they were living together, there was a locked room in their home that she was not allowed to go into. But one day she peered in and saw wigs, fake mustaches, fedoras. Cheryl. And a police scanner.
Hannah Smith
Oh, uh huh.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Suspect.
Hannah Smith
Yeah. So what's Cheryl thinking at this point?
Pasha Eaton
She's thinking, you're probably not a locksmith. But I'm on my way out, so, you know. So Ray begins dating a woman named Virginia Delamote, and she goes by Jenny. And by 1990, they're living together. Now, Jenny had a child from a previous relationship, as did Ray. And then Jenny and Ray go on to have two daughters together. So Ray tells Jenny and others at this time in his life that he sells lawnmowers and works as a private investigator. And just like during his relationship with Cheryl, he leaves for weeks at a time. And I read somewhere that he would tell her to take the kids to the grocery store and that's when he would leave.
Hannah Smith
What do you mean? Like, he wouldn't tell her, like, I'm going on a work trip.
Pasha Eaton
It would be sort of their code, like, I'm going on a trip. I'm going to be gone for a while so that the kids didn't start.
Hannah Smith
Getting upset or whatever.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, because, you know, whether you're a bank robber or a traveling salesman, you probably have to pack for a trip like that.
Hannah Smith
Right?
Pasha Eaton
Like, especially if you've got a bunch of fedoras, like I imagine the boxes you're traveling with, not to squish them.
Hannah Smith
So get the kids out of the house so that I can pack my trench coat.
Pasha Eaton
I think that's what it was.
Hannah Smith
I see.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. She never knew where he was going, for how long or had any wait to contact him. Now, in 1991, Billy and Ray rob a bank in Green Valley outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, and they take off with $138,000. But police nearly capture them in the process. Billy and Ray take a hostage, lead police on a high speed chase, and Even exchange gunfire.
Hannah Smith
What?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. And so somehow they managed to get away. The hostage was left somewhere unharmed. I could not find hardly anything about this. It's.
Hannah Smith
So this hostage, I guess that was seeing them in disguise?
Pasha Eaton
Yes.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
And is this before CCTV?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So this is like we're in the early 90s, you know, even any security footage that would be had was probably pretty fuzzy. And a lot of the time they were driving stolen cars.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
They were either renting a car or driving a stolen car. So it wasn't like we got the license plate. Bingo.
Hannah Smith
Right, okay.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
So they're pretty careful about that, driving different cars and apparently have really good disguises. I mean, I'm just imagining those glasses that have the nose and then like the hair on the top of the glasses.
Pasha Eaton
I mean it's almost like that. And you know, I'm thinking if I'm a bank teller and two men walk in in trench coats, I'm done for the day, I'm going home, goodbye, I'm.
Hannah Smith
Going to take the afternoon off.
Pasha Eaton
Exactly. But somehow they managed to get out of this high speed chase unharmed and this hostage somehow unharmed. Like always, the Trencote robbers then split ways, return to their lives. And now Ray has a young daughter along with his older children to go home to. Billy returns to his girlfriend Myra Penny in Minnesota. So just like in the home he shared with Cheryl, he has the same locked room with Jenny. Right. She's not allowed to go in there. It was a very modest house, a small ranch style home in the middle class neighborh. And they're successfully flying under the radar. Now fast forwarding a little bit. The trenchcoat robbers have been linked to 27, sometimes I read 20 different bank robberies. So as this is all happening through the early 90s, because this started back in the 80s, the FBI is assembling a task force because they know that these trenchcoat robbers exist, but they don't know who they are at this time. They've been featured on America's Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries, but they always seem to be 10 steps ahead.
Hannah Smith
Wow.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Until one day in May of 1997 when the first domino falls.
Hannah Smith
Ah, what is it?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, so we heard from Paul Marquardt, earlier retired ATF agent, semi retired. You know, I would say he still works sometimes hard to give up the job. Yeah, he really loves it. He was just the best to talk to about this. Yeah. So back in 1997, Paul is working as an agent for the ATF in Kansas City, Missouri.
Paul Marquardt
I'm walking down the hall, it's mid afternoon. I'm already thinking about going home a little bit earlier. And the assistant special agent in charge walks out of his, out of their division office and say, hey, Paul, come here. And I got a note. This company called Federal Van and Storage, they say they got a machine gun and a silencer in one of their storage lockers here. Go ahead and check this out. So I grabbed another agent, we both went to Federal Van and Storage to check it out.
Pasha Eaton
So Paul's walking down the hallway gets us. No, you know, this is a typical day at work for him. He actually mentioned in our, on our call that he was like getting ready to leave for the day. So it's a little bit of like a. Okay, I'll go check it out. Now this storage unit that he's being called to come take a look at, what has happened is the storage unit. This unit hasn't paid its bill. So the storage facility, they prepare to get rid of the contents via something like Storage wars, right? But they have to know what's in there for sure. So they go and check it out and they find these guns and some other stuff that we'll get into. And that's why they called the atf.
Hannah Smith
Very suspicious.
Pasha Eaton
Very suspicious. So the name on the storage unit is Ray Bowman. Not even a fake name. Not even a fake name. And he hasn't paid his bill, which is why they went in there in the first place, right?
Hannah Smith
Amateur mistake.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Unbelievable. Because I mean, clearly this guy's a pro at this point.
Hannah Smith
And you have the money. You have the money. Unless you spent it on something else.
Pasha Eaton
He had the money. Yeah. Isn't that wild?
Hannah Smith
That's really wild. Like what a mistake.
Pasha Eaton
Truly huge. It was like $155 bill.
Hannah Smith
That's like pretty unbelievable.
Pasha Eaton
I think so too. I mean, the only thing I'll give to my guests is like you don't have auto pay, right at that point.
Hannah Smith
So you have to send a check or something, right? I'm guessing just couldn't get himself to the post office.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, just too busy. Too busy. So the storage unit sends this letter to Ray's address. It doesn't get there because the address doesn't exist. So with no payment, no response, they open up the unit, check it out, pause, gets this call and goes to the unit, okay? So they get out there and sure enough, there's multiple guns. But there's also a crown royal back. Like those purple, you know, Crown royal, like the liquor.
Hannah Smith
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pasha Eaton
And funny enough, Paul said that they actually see these a lot when they're investigating people storing things in those bags.
Hannah Smith
Because they're, like, nice sort of like velvet bags. And people just like to keep them, I guess, and store things in them.
Pasha Eaton
I guess so. I guess so. And so Paul recognizes that there's these little metal pieces in the bag, and they are components that you would use to make a silencer. And silencers are illegal. So these components are illegal, at least at this time. And Paul has a specific skill set that allowed him to immediately recognize what these were. And, you know, he noted throughout the call how many strange coincidences there were in this investigation that allowed them to put the pieces together. So he recognizes these as components of silencers. But that's not all he finds.
Paul Marquardt
But there were other weird things in there. There's a police hat, a blue cap with police written on it. It got really strange because there was a legal briefcase that was full of pamphlets. I think there were, like, 80, 85 of them or something like that. I once had to type them all out. They were on the weirdest subjects. How to kill people, how to do makeup, how to go. You know, just how to hide yourself from the authorities.
Pasha Eaton
This is like a little aspect of.
Hannah Smith
Someone'S search history now.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, like, pamphlets. Pamphlets. Okay. So Paul and his fellow agent sees the contents of the storage locker, and the storage company's glad they hand it over. They want nothing to do with it. But now they're also scared because they have given the ATF everything in this man's storage locker. And he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that wants the ATF to know about his storage locker, let alone have everything in it. Hmm.
Morgan
Hi, I'm Morgan. I have three kids. I have an IQ of 160. I work with the cops.
Sam Bowman
You're a cop?
Morgan
But they do sign my paychecks. Kaitlin Olsen returns in High Potential, the number one drama.
Paul Marquardt
She was abducted.
Pasha Eaton
You knew that already, didn't you?
Morgan
Yeah, I thought it'd be nice to let you have this one. And one of the best new crime procedurals.
Pasha Eaton
You're waiting on me to leave so you can poke around without a warrant, aren't you? Yeah.
Morgan
High potential. New Tuesdays, 10, 9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty. Which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results and then you just go out and live your life.
Pasha Eaton
Meaningful beauty.
Morgan
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Pasha Eaton
So they're pretty afraid that he's going to come back to pay his bill and then be really unhappy. So Paul tells them, look, if this person comes back to pay the bill, take the money, there's a chance they won't even go back to the locker and check it out. And in case they do, I'm gonna leave a letter in there on ATF letterhead that says, hey, we'd like to talk to you. So the man behind the counter of the storage office, his name's Alan. And I wanna call this out. It's a small detail that probably is not that relevant, but Paul mentioned it a few times that Alan was extremely frightened by this. But he did as he was asked by Paul, and it ended up playing a major role in their investigation moving forward. So Paul leaves with all the contents of the storage locker, leaves a letter in the storage locker.
Paul Marquardt
They were actually a little relieved that I wanted to take them. And so we just loaded those up and ironically, I called the FBI on my way back to the office and I asked to speak to somebody in the bank robbery unit. And a guy answers and I said, hey, are you guys. Told them who I was. That was an ATF agent, had just found a box full of weird stuff that looked like a bank robbery kit to me because it had a bulletproof vest, it had a police hat, it had a scanner with an earpiece. So I'm thinking this is the kind of stuff you use in a robbery. I said, is there anybody that you're looking at? The guy says, no, not really. But if you ever find out who he is, give us a call back.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So whoever he had called was probably in the local Kansas City office, was not aware of Trench Rob task force. But eventually Paul would get a call back. But it would take almost a year. So this is happening in May of 1997. So a couple months after that cfirst bank robbery, which happened in February of 1997. Okay, so the storage unit visit were in May 1997. Okay, so Paul has never heard of the trench coat robbers at this time. You know, it's like they were on the news and making headlines because there was some security footage, but the access to information was just not what it is now. You couldn't just Google like, are we looking for any bank robbers? Right, so he just does what he's supposed to do as an ATF agent and starts investigating the silencers and the guns and these.
Hannah Smith
And he has a name, right? Right.
Pasha Eaton
He has the name Ray Bowman. But Ray did not put down a real address, so they can't go there. But then Paul gets a call from the storage company, and this is within a few weeks of them seizing the items from the locker. So Allen behind the front desk is on the other line, and he says someone has shown up to settle the account.
Paul Marquardt
But he had come in and they said, well, you know, you're in arrears. And he said, yeah, I'm here to pay. Pay it. So he did. And they were so desperately afraid of him. They just didn't mention the fact that, you know, somebody came and took your boxes, and they were just hoping and praying that he wasn't going to check them out, which he did not. All he wanted to do is just pay what was owed. So he paid them in cash, $155 and like 63 cents and walks out. And here's one of these strange twists of this. There's this guy that was dealing with him was scared to death. His name was Alan Powell. He's deceased now, but he was kind of a strange guy. He worked there, and he had a little dog that would sit under his desk and everything. It was. He was just kind of a different kind of cat. And what happened is he ran to the window as the guy's leaving and writes down the license plate of the car that he's leaving in.
Pasha Eaton
Cool.
Paul Marquardt
If he doesn't do that, we aren't any closer to figuring out who he is. But he did.
Hannah Smith
Alan.
Pasha Eaton
Alan, the unsung hero.
Hannah Smith
We love it.
Pasha Eaton
So they now have the license plate and a name. So Ray Bowman and a license plate. And so they run the plate, and it actually comes back to a guy named Wayne Wells. And of course, Paul figures out, well, who's Wayne Wells? And he's a local retired police Officer who had actually stopped working due to disability. He has since passed away, but Paul is at this point wondering, does he have a dirty cop on his hands? So this takes Paul to the local pd. So he's now talking to the police and their intelligence unit, trying to see who is Wayne Wells, because we need to investigate him. He's tied to this strange man who has the storage locker. Now, here's where one of those other coincidences that Paul told me about comes into play is while he's at this police department, debriefing them on what's going on and saying he needs to learn more about Wayne Wells. Someone who's working there hears the name Ray Bowman and tells Paul that he's related to someone named Cheryl who previously dated Ray Bowman. So Paul is really happy to have this intel, but he's also like, this is great for me, but don't go talk to Cheryl or Wayne because I need everything to lay low until I figure out what I'm dealing with here.
Hannah Smith
Okay?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. He was very afraid that they would tip him off, because you never know.
Hannah Smith
Are Cheryl and Wayne still working with him? He doesn't know exactly.
Pasha Eaton
But this is now a different entity, right? This is the police department, not the atf. And they are. You know, they collaborate, but they don't work for Paul.
Hannah Smith
Interesting. Yeah. Okay.
Paul Marquardt
Well, a couple days go by, and I find out that Watland and another. Another officer named. I think it's Dan Reynolds, they went and interviewed her, even though I was. I was insisting they not. No, I was furious with them. And I said, why did you do that? But it broke the case wide open because she was cooperative. She told them stuff about how when she was living with him, he had a locked room that he wouldn't allow her into, that he would go on business trips for two or three weeks at a time and come back and not even tell her where he'd gone and all this stuff at one time, he asked her to sew him a bulletproof vest with Kevlar. Just a wealth of knowledge about him. Even knew that he was living with somebody called Jenny.
Hannah Smith
Wow, this is a huge break.
Pasha Eaton
Huge break. So now Paul needs to move really quickly, because even though it seems like Cheryl's cooperative and has no interest in protecting Ray, at this point, she does know him. They do have mutual contacts. So, okay, he's like, ray is living with someone named Jenny. So he finds Jenny's address, and that's how he locates Ray's residence. So that was given to them by Sheryl Clark. The ex girlfriend. But they still need to figure out why Wayne Wells is connected to this at all. And what they uncover is that Wayne had some sort of lawnmower business. Now, earlier I was saying that Ray told people, including Jenny, that he sold lawnmowers, right?
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. And so I wasn't able to fully understand that connection, if Wayne had any knowledge or not of Ray's crime spree. But that is the connection there in some way. But most importantly, they now know where Ray lives because Sheryl told them. So the ATF put something called a Penn Register on the residents, and it's different than a wiretap. It just tells you what calls are incoming to the residence and outgoing from a residence.
Hannah Smith
It gives you, like, the number of the caller.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, exactly. So you can just see, okay, this number calls a lot. This number calls a lot. You know, see if there's patterns.
Hannah Smith
Gotcha.
Pasha Eaton
And they also do a trash run. So they start picking up any trash that's left outside the residence.
Hannah Smith
The glamorous part of the job, right?
Pasha Eaton
Exactly. And for whatever reason, in one of these trash runs, they throw away, there's a photo of Ray and his family. So Ray, Jenny and their kids. It gets cataloged because they know what Ray looks like. Now they're starting to surveil him. The local PD is surveilling him, and they have no idea still that he's one of the trench coat robbers. But as they're following Ray, they notice he's making a lot of calls from payphones. And they subpoena the records from those payphones and set up something new called a mail cover. So Ray had a P.O. box that they are able to track down. And a mail cover tells you, kind of like a pen register, what mail is incoming, what mail is outgoing. But they're not opening it. They're just keeping track and kind of following the lead because they don't want to tip off Ray that people are looking at his mail.
Hannah Smith
Right?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So Paul, in the midst of this investigation that's unfolding, asks an intern at the atf, pull up every police report, arrest record, anything you can find on Ray Bowman. And he does. And we've talked a lot about Ray, and we're not done yet. But meanwhile, in Minnesota, also in the late spring of 1997, Billy and his girlfriend, Myra Penny, are building a cabin.
Hannah Smith
That's quaint.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, it's quaint.
Hannah Smith
Right.
Pasha Eaton
And the cabin was being built in northern Minnesota, really far north, like by the Canadian border, I think.
Hannah Smith
I bet that's beautiful.
Pasha Eaton
So pretty great choice. What a relaxing escape.
Hannah Smith
Billy has good taste.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So, you know, when you have that kind of cash, it's not like you can walk into a bank and deposit it. It's not like you can put it in a mutual fund. So they're trying to figure out a way to spend it. So they're building this cabin together and they're paying the builder in cash. Well, Billy and Mayra are making a lot of complaints to the builder. They don't like this, they don't like that things aren't moving fast enough. And they're really starting to frustrate him. And he's like, you know, it's pretty unusual that someone would pay me all in cash because we're talking six figure payments. And he gets very irritated and he decides to call the irs.
Hannah Smith
Wow. Basically, they piss off their contractor.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Like, so silly. And I feel like, meanwhile, Ray was so careful in most ways. I mean, the storage unit not paying that certainly a slip up, but seemed like he was treading pretty lightly. But Myra and Billy piss off this guy building their house, and he calls the irs and he's like, maybe you should look into them. The IRS is like, let's do it. So they begin investigating, and this process takes a couple more months. So now we're in October of 1997. And as a reminder, the cfirst bank robbery was in February of 1997. Ray's storage unit was found out in May of 1997.
Hannah Smith
Got it.
Pasha Eaton
So now we're in October. And we know that Billy and Ray have some sort of connection because of the pen register and the mail cover. But we don't yet know that they're the trench coat robbers or what their relationship is at all.
Paul Marquardt
And so the IRS agent up there, a guy named Billy Waters, who ended up being a major player in this case, actually went to the house and served them with a grand jury subpoena. And that freaked them out. And so all he was looking at was like, what are you doing with all this cash? He just wanted to investigate it. But what they did is they panicked and they actually flew to Las Vegas because they had a bunch of money in a storage place there, and they picked it up and she flew back.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So what he says at the end of that clip is they panic when they get this subpoena. So they try to take this cash that has been in their home or in nearby locations and they drive it to Las Vegas. They put it in a storage unit or in a safe deposit box, some sort of storage situation there. Myra flies home and Billy drives. So as Billy is driving home, Myra's back home because she flew. And she calls Ray and she tells him, uncle Tom has been to the house. Now, I'm not completely sure of the translation on that, but it's something like, we're in deep shit with the federal government.
Hannah Smith
Yeah, that's the code word. Uncle Tom has been to the house.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, not the call Ray wanted to get. So Billy's still making his way through Nebraska, going seven miles over the speed limit. And he crossed paths with a Nebraska state trooper who had just so happened to recently attend a course on drug interdiction, which just means that you are stopping drugs from getting to their destination. And he's pulling Billy over for breaking the speed limit. So this is November 10, 1997. Now, when he approaches the driver's side of Billy's car, he notices Billy seems pretty nervous. So he asks, can I search the car? Billy says, no, no, you can't search the car. Well, the police officer calls for backup. He's like, just hold on, I'm really gonna search your car. He also calls in for a drug dog because he has just taken this class on drug interdiction and the dog.
Paul Marquardt
Didn'T exactly hit on the trunk. The dog seemed interested in the car, but he didn't. According to the handler, it wasn't a good enough sign that there was dope in the car. But the trooper on his own decides, well, this guy's really nervous and he's not being cooperative, so I'm going to search the car. So he searches the inside of the car and he finds a couple guns. He finds a bunch of lock picking material, keys, all kinds of stuff. So he decides, I'm going to open up the trunk. He opens up the trunk, foot locker in the trunk, opens up $1.8 million in cash.
Pasha Eaton
So that's a lot of money. But Paul calls this a bad search. So that is an unwarranted search because they pulled Billy over for speeding and then they searched the car after he said, you can't search the car, but he did anyway, and he alerts the FBI. And so I'm not exactly clear on when the FBI then gets. But Billy's taken into custody, I'm assuming because of what was already going on with the irs, they had some way to make sure this was above board. I can only assume.
Hannah Smith
So he never makes it back. He's arrested.
Pasha Eaton
He's arrested.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, I think he was arrested that day that he was pulled over so Billy's in custody, and now the FBI is raiding his house, and they're starting to put together. Here's a guy with a lot of cash. Here's a guy that the ATF thinks is a bank robber. But we don't know what their relationship is. We know they've communicated, but as they raid Billy's house, they find something.
Paul Marquardt
Yeah, we're on the phone with the FBI agents that are in the house up in Minnesota at the log cabin, serving a search warrant there. And they're acting kind of weird. They're saying, well, we're not really finding anything. And. And they were kind of frustrated, and I can't remember exactly how it happened, but somehow somebody said, well, there's a picture on the refrigerator. And we said, well, what's the picture of? Well, it's a guy and a woman and three kids. And we're like, bingo, that's Ray Bowman. So we're trying to tell him, that's Ray. That's the guy we're working on here.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
Wow. Like a Christmas card or something.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, like just some photo that they both had. Yeah, probably a Christmas card. I hadn't thought of that. Maybe that's what it was, and that's why it ended up in the trash. Is like, how long does a person keep a Christmas card?
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
So because of this grand jury subpoena, this code word call. Uncle Tom has been to the house. Ray has known that things have been heating up for them. So he takes, while this is happening, two duffel bags filled with cash, well over $100,000 in each one of them, and drops them off with his estranged brother that he's been estranged from for, I think, about two years at this point. And he tells his brother, hold onto these duffel bags. Don't open them. If anything happens to me, it's for my kids. He also tells his partner Jenny, that something bad has happened to a friend of his, and he's not sure if it will affect him. She doesn't know what this means, but from what I know about their relationship, and Jenny is pretty sharp, she understood that the lack of transparency and all of these comments were concerning. And she had young children that she was looking after. And so I'm sure she wondered about it, but what could she do? And the day then comes, Ray Bowman is arrested without incident while being surveilled as his home is raided. Wow.
Paul Marquardt
I'm reading him his rights. You're done. And he argued with me, and I said, I'm telling you, I'm Reading him as rights.
Sam Bowman
Rights.
Paul Marquardt
Right now I read Ray is rights. I said, do you want to talk? And Ray just nods his head no, which I knew was going to happen. I said, that's it. Take him back to a cell. And that was it. But then I left to go to where they were serving the search warrant. And that was crazy because they got into that locked room, and I thought I'd get there too late to see anything. Well, it took them forever to get into that locked room because they had to get a locksmith to break in because it was a really high dollar lock that he had on the room. And then inside was a safe. And that took the guy probably another 2 hours to break into the safe. So we were there quite late. And I think we took all together, we took, like, $379,000 in cash and 85 guns, and it was quite a haul.
Pasha Eaton
Whoosh.
Hannah Smith
I love that he had to bring in a locksmith to break into Rhea's secret room.
Pasha Eaton
And it took them hours.
Hannah Smith
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So rhe is arrested, Billy's in custody, and they're linking them together. So Ray and Billy are both in custody. The atf, the irs, FBI, they're like, we've got the trench coat robbers. These are the trench coat robbers. Ray's brother then turns in the duffel bags, which are, of course, full of cash traceable back to the cfirst bank robbery. So they still needed a little bit more than the photo and the cash. Like, they know who they are, but they need to be able to prove it. And so they go back through the mail cover and see that Billy, at one point, mailed Ray a key to a safe deposit box in Washington state, where the cfirst bank robbery happened. And they then remember that intern who pulled all these arrest records, and they see mugshots going back to 1962 for their record boosting.
Hannah Smith
Wow.
Pasha Eaton
And they're arrested together at certain times. And so you have the names and different police reports. So certainly the photo was really great evidence. But they had been linked many other ways. Once everyone sort of collaborated, really, largely thanks to the investigation done by the etf. That's really what broke the case wide open.
Paul Marquardt
And I remember when I'm sitting down with all these FBI agents and they said, man, if we could only put them together. And I reached into my box of stuff, and I pulled out that police report, and I said, well, this dude. They got arrested together stealing records in Springfield. And they said, how? Why did you do all this? They just couldn't get over it that we did a pen register and we did the mail cover, and we did all this stuff. I had a file about an inch and a half thick of all his prior arrests. None of them resulted in a conviction, though. I mean, he didn't do time.
Hannah Smith
What an exciting moment when it all comes together.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, totally. And, you know, Paul said multiple times throughout the interview, like, he thinks highly of the FBI. He was glad that they were collaborating with this. But ultimately, they kind of take center stage at the end of the story after he's done all this legwork. And you can tell it's a little bit like, no. But the trench coat robbers are finally brought to justice. They're arrested in. In 1997, and they're charged with some of the bank robberies. But the issue is that even though these different organizations like the FBI and the ATF are able to put together well over 20, around 27 bank robberies, the statute of limitations was up on most of them.
Hannah Smith
Really?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. A lot of them had, like, a five year statute of limitations. So what could they do? Yeah. So they have three robberies that they're able to charge them with. That is the U.S. bank in Portland, Oregon, which took place in February of 1994. They stole $233,000. A bank in Ohio on October 6, 1994, $362,000. And of course, the cfirst bank in Washington, where they stole 4.5 million. 4.4 million. But we can round up. Okay. So in 1998, Billy decides he's gonna take a plea deal. And here is where it kind of turns for me with Billy, because he has told Myra a lot over the years.
Hannah Smith
I was gonna ask that, because when they get the call, they're freaking out, seemingly together. She also knows we're paying for this cabin in cash. So how much does she know?
Pasha Eaton
She knows a lot. I called her.
Hannah Smith
You did?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. She didn't answer. I also emailed her.
Hannah Smith
Wow.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. No answer from Myra. But, yeah, I think she knew a lot. I think he had told her more and more. And so she pleads with him to take a deal.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
And he does. And so he goes into custody in 1997. He takes the plea deal in early 1998, and he was released in 2011.
Hannah Smith
Wow. Okay.
Pasha Eaton
I called him too, and no answer.
Hannah Smith
Okay. But Myra wasn't charged with anything.
Pasha Eaton
So Myra had tried to bail him out when he first was arrested. What did she use? Stolen cash. Myra. So, yeah, I think she did, like, six months for money laundering or something. I mean, she must have really loved this guy. Ray, on the other hand, decides to take his case to trial. And I think a lot of that was based on that. He thought that the searches were not up to above board. And so could they really use all the evidence that they said they had on him? And he was found guilty, and he was sentenced to 295 months in prison.
Hannah Smith
How many years is that?
Pasha Eaton
It's a lot. I think it was 24 years or something like that.
Hannah Smith
Whereas Billy served. What would that have been? 10ish.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. Less than 15 years.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So let's see here. Ray was sentenced to over 24 years.
Hannah Smith
Okay. So quite a bit longer.
Sam Bowman
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
And Ray ended up passing away in prison, which we'll talk more about in a minute. But I wanna say Ray and Billy, they didn't kill anyone, but they stole a lot of money and traumatized a lot of people who stood between them and that money. And. And most of those people were just at work doing their jobs. They held the family at gunpoint in the middle of the night. They exchanged gunfire with officers who were obviously also just doing their job. So it was not a victimless crime spree. And indirectly, they also had two other major victims, which were two other bank robbers.
Hannah Smith
Really?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So Frank Buldach and Frances Larkin.
Paul Marquardt
And there's an interesting side story. Two other guys from Boston had gotten arrested by the FBI for two of the jobs that they did in Wisconsin. And these guys actually got convicted.
Pasha Eaton
Oh, my gosh. So two other guys were wrongly convicted for robberies committed by Ray and Billy?
Paul Marquardt
Yes.
Hannah Smith
Were they actual bank robbers or not? And they just got convicted of these crimes? I mean, either way, it's.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So basically what happened is Frank Buldock and Frances Larkin had been charged with having committed an armored car robbery in Boston. They hadn't been convicted of that crime at this point, but they had been charged stealing a large amount of cash from an armored car. An FBI agent who happened to be either familiar with or working on the Trenchcoat Robber case was visiting Boston when he reads an article about this duo that robbed an armored car. And he's like, boom, these must be the Trenchcoat Robbers. It's not unreasonable. So they arrest Bulldog and Larkin, and they are actually convicted for having robbed a bank in Milwaukee in 1991, which was actually not them. It was Billy and Ray. Buldock was sentenced to 48 years and 4 months in prison. Larkin was sentenced to 32 years and 6 months in prison. And they ended up actually just dropping the armored car robbery. Charges after that because, you know, they're effectively spending the rest of their lives in prison. Now, these guys were not innocent in their lives. They were innocent of this specific robbery that they were charged with. But Bulldog had been convicted of second degree murder in Massachusetts and released on parole before this all happened. So, yeah, I don't want to also make it seem like they were not problematic in their own ways, but they certainly shouldn't have been convicted of this crime.
Hannah Smith
They were convicted of a crime they did not commit. So then was that overturned and were they released?
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. So during their imprisonment, the Trenchcoat Robbers are found out and arrested. So I think it was Billy who admits to this Milwaukee robbery. And when that is revealed, they have to release these people. So they were both released from prison in 1999. I'm not discussing their other crimes because it just wasn't part of the story. But they didn't do the crime that they were serving all this time for, which is a huge miscarriage of justice.
Hannah Smith
Totally. It doesn't, you know, I mean, it doesn't really matter. It reminds me of our Jennifer Thompson episode where, you know, she talked about putting the wrong person in prison, no matter if you think they're a good person or not, is an injustice. And so I'm glad that they got released. And that's really wild.
Pasha Eaton
Totally. And I will say that bulldog sued for $9 million for the wrongful conviction.
Hannah Smith
This is also why it's a terrible idea. Like, obviously, you know, it wasn't intentional, but. Yeah, then of course they're gonna sue and probably get money.
Sam Bowman
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
The judge actually, I think, threw it out because they were like, you're not innocent. Okay, but I mean. Yeah, Little side story there. But isn't that so crazy?
Hannah Smith
So crazy.
Pasha Eaton
That is largely the story of the Trenchcoat Robbers. But Ray Bowman was also a father. And, you know, I had listened to that great podcast, My Fugitive dad, and I'm like, what is it like? Like, what is that like to know your dad as this other person portrayed in the media? And so I reached out to a couple of family members and I was lucky enough to speak with Sam Bowman, who is Ray's daughter. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, she was really young when this all happened, but of course, it has tremendously impacted her life and still does. And, you know, I asked Sam about her dad and the man that she knew because she didn't know this version of him. And I also wanna first say, before I get into the Sam Bowman of it all, Sam was so great and acknowledged as we were getting into our conversation talking about the fact that her dad went to prison and she didn't get to spend most of her life with him because of that. And then he passed away in prison. She was like, yeah, and his time was cut short, but by his own choices. And she fully acknowledged what he did. And I think it is totally within her rights to also acknowledge that he was her dad. And I asked her if she had any memories that she would share with me about Ray as her dad.
Sam Bowman
I think about him in his giant green armchair. He used to stick his lower lip out in a very specific way. And he would always be reading the newspaper. And he's just under this warm yellow light and it's dark outside the house.
Hannah Smith
And.
Sam Bowman
And that's where he would always be. If he was home and not doing anything else in the house, he would just be in that chair and reading. And then every night I would climb in his lap and I'd lay down and he'd rub my back and I'd watch the TV like 60 Minutes, whatever was on or coughs. And then he'd rub my back until I went to sleep. And then he would carry me to my room and tuck me in and say, buenos noches. And I would go to sleep.
Hannah Smith
That's really sweet.
Pasha Eaton
It's really sweet. I mean, I'm so glad she has that memory of him. And Sam was just so great. And she does have, in her own way, like, a sense of humor about all of this. And she said, you know, he also, I remember, had a lot of trench coats, which of course have been widely reported on. But here's what she had to say about it.
Hannah Smith
Okay.
Sam Bowman
Actually, he used to. Obviously he wore trench coats a lot. He was very, very fashionable, obviously. Yeah, so he was very fashionable. I know he used to wear like Italian silk button down shirts or whatever. He was always well dressed. My mother was always well dressed. They believed in presenting themselves in that way to the world, which I also like to do in my own personal style. But specifically what I loved was he wore like Italian leather shoes, like specific leather shoes that were made for his feet, which means that he had those. Oh, gosh, they're like wooden feet.
Paul Marquardt
Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
And so I was picturing this, like, okay, you have this dad who wears nice clothes and has these like custom shoe shape holders. It's like he tucks her into bed at night. But he also watches cops.
Hannah Smith
I know, I was gonna say, I'm.
Pasha Eaton
Like, I love this.
Hannah Smith
She watches cops with him.
Pasha Eaton
Of course.
Hannah Smith
This is something that's interesting to him.
Pasha Eaton
Right. She said that he loved watching shows like that. And I'm like, is this guy just an adrenaline junkie?
Hannah Smith
Wow. Wow. I love hearing these details about him, you know, that he was, like, obviously really cared about his clothes and spent a lot of time and money on his appearance. Yeah.
Pasha Eaton
And I wasn't able to locate these people, but I heard through my various phone calls and research that actually Ray and Billy, overall now after they zip tied and pointing guns at people, acknowledging that were kind. Like there were instances where someone said, it's too tight, it's hurting me. And they would loosen it a little bit and reassure them they were gonna be okay. And look, I don't wanna overstate a level of kindness when you're robbing a bank and people are terrified. But they had, you know, these different layers to them. And I loved talking with Sam and hearing about this other part of Ray that you don't hear about. I asked her, though, looking back, could she remember any display of wealth or money that might have seemed out of place given their otherwise modest lifestyle because she was so young.
Sam Bowman
I like to say that I'm very lucky. I had no conscious concept of money until after it happened, when we immediately had no money. To me, no, there was nothing, I would say, that was extravagant. I know he used to have, like. It wasn't great, but it was gorgeous at the time as a 1986 Corvette. At one point he had a Harley that was from like the 73, something like that. He liked his clothes, he liked to eat well. I remember because we lived outside Kansas City, we would go to the Plaza and he would spoil us with toys. Toys. Like when we were born, when. Because my older sister, he would spoil her with me. With my little sister. Like, we just. Toys galore.
Hannah Smith
Yeah. He sounds like a great guy, honestly.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, he's a great guy.
Hannah Smith
I mean, obviously they committed a crime. They also did their time for it. But there's something really romantic about bank robbers because it's sort of like this idea that they were like, you know, this whole thing with the American dream, this whole thing I'm born into, where I'm gonna maybe have to work this 9 to 5. And I don't know their backgrounds, but it seems like neither of them came from wealth. And they were like, actually, we'll just cheat the system and we're gonna do it differently. And then it's sort of hard to be super sympathetic when they're stealing from banks, you know, so there's something that feels adventurous about it. And I am not discounting the fact that they also terrified people. But, yeah, it's interesting we talk about.
Pasha Eaton
This so much, but especially talking to Sam, just being reminded that people are, you know, dynamic, and it doesn't mean something. That he did wasn't wrong, but he was also a dad who clearly loved his children, and he really, I think, did what he could to sort of protect them from what was going on. You know, Paul Marquardt, the ATF agent we've been hearing clips from, said that at Ray's trial, when Jenny learned the amount of money that he had stolen in the cfirst bank robbery, she audibly gasped in the courtroom. I mean, she truly had no idea. And, you know, she was completely innocent of the crimes that he committed. We talked about Myra Penney, Billy's girlfriend, on the other hand, who had been arrested for money laundering. She also then wanted to shield her children from it as much as she could. So for the most part, Sam actually grew up knowing nothing specific about what happened.
Sam Bowman
So obviously, all of this happens when I'm like, first grade, and that's like the fallout of it, first and a second grade. So being that young, my mom said daddy broke a rule and he has to go to timeout for a while, because that's how you explain that to, like, a five year old. Four or five year old.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Sam Bowman
And that it made sense. And I kind of held onto that for so long, but what I held onto from that was, oh, he's gonna come home. Like, he'll come back. He's just in time out.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah. I mean, it's sad. And she would go and visit her father sometimes while he was in prison, but was so young that the visit was, you know, it's in a very controlled environment, and it's not like she's using that time to ask a lot of questions, but they would exchange letters and birthday cards. And another sweet that Sam told me is that her uncles, her father's brothers, would send birthday cards blank to Ray for him to fill out to his kids in prison, and he always would. And I just thought that was so sweet, the way they really rallied, you know, because when all of this happened, Jenny then had no money, nowhere to go. She had been reliant on Ray financially, which I think is the case in a lot of households. And they moved in with one of her sisters in Georgia. She had to go back to work to support the family. And so when I asked Sam more about, like, what did you know and when did you find out she was like, you know, life just sort of keeps moving, and it's not like you don't have questions, but it doesn't consume your thoughts because it's your normal. But one day it is revealed to her, actually. Sam was home with her older sister, and her older sister was watching a crime show on television.
Sam Bowman
We were in Georgia. We lived in an apartment out there. And my older sister had told me, sam, you need to go to your room. And it's the middle of the day, and she's watching tv, and I. I'm like, why are you telling me to go to my room? That's rude. I don't need to be in there. So I pretend to go to my room, and then I sneak back out, and I'm hiding behind the couch in our living room, and she watching the tv. And from behind the couch, me peeking around the corner, I found out what my dad did and what his life was before he had me and when he had me, and after he had me. And I found out about the trial, and I found out about everything. And I was 10 years old. Nine years old. 10 years old. Yeah. No one had to tell me.
Pasha Eaton
I found out.
Sam Bowman
It was just so. Such a surreal way to realize that, just to actually come to terms with, oh, he's not coming back, because you don't come back from that.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah, I mean, we didn't get into the specifics of this. She was so young when it all happened. But I imagine, you know, he was sentenced to 24 years. That's an amount of time that's hard to comprehend as an adult and as a child. It's impossible. And so I think Jenny, just in an effort to protect them, was sort of also protecting the details of that. And he's in timeout, and we'll see him when we see him. And they did go and visit, but it was difficult. And Sam, because of this experience, really sees what we've seen, which is that people are capable of good and bad. And that's the case for almost everyone, I think, every.
Sam Bowman
Because it's so these shades of gray that people have, where no one is black or white, everyone is a shade of gray. Everyone thought and experienced my dad as this wonderful person. And obviously his brother knew good and bad. I'm sure his mom knew good and bad, but he was kind in so many ways. And then he was my dad, and he was, in my opinion, for a short time, a very good dad. So reconciling. I think that's why it made such a sad impact on so many People, the people who knew him for so long, understood that he had been doing this for so long and were like, you did this to yourself while still mourning the fact that he had started a family. He had kids. He was trying to do better in some ways and was trying to be there for us.
Pasha Eaton
Ray passed away in prison in 2011. So Sam actually has a tattoo on her arm that reminds her of her dad. And it's a trench coat hanging on a shoe rack or hanging on a coat rack with the Italian leather shoes at the bottom of it. And she said that she'll find herself holding her arm where the tattoo is at times, and it just reminds her of him. And I just really loved that. I mean, Sam is such a thoughtful, kind, introspective person, and it's just one of the ways that she has processed her grief. So thank you so much to Sam for sharing her story with us as well.
Hannah Smith
I'm so glad that you were able to speak with her.
Pasha Eaton
Yeah.
Hannah Smith
I'm curious, you know, so when they were finally caught, how much money was found that they actually took?
Pasha Eaton
Do you know, I tried to figure this out, and I couldn't. They recovered some of it, but not all of it. Is the short answer.
Hannah Smith
Well, that's my other question. First of all, if I were the brother, good for him for following the law and doing the right thing. But he probably could have held onto those duffel bags full of money and would have been okay. But you think about all of those safety deposit boxes and bank boxes spread out across the country, and I'm like, did they find all of it? Did they not?
Pasha Eaton
Impossible to say. And I, you know, Billy didn't answer the phone, but I certainly would have asked. I know that Ray also told his mother, hey, here's a keto safe deposit box if anything happens to me. When things started heating up. He was trying to sort of help his family before he went to prison, I think. But, yeah, sounds like his family turned in any money that they became aware of. And, yeah, I don't know. It's a lot of money to recover. And it sounds like they were pretty good at hiding it. I asked Sam, you know, do you get that question? And she's like, sometimes. And I understand people's curiosity, but that usually people's response is pretty empathetic when she tells them.
Hannah Smith
Yeah, I mean, what a wild thing. It's like such a banana story. And then if it's like your life, though, and your father, then it's, you know, very real and a whole different thing.
Pasha Eaton
Totally. Yeah. So that is the story of the trench coat rollers.
Hannah Smith
Taysha. What a story.
Pasha Eaton
What a story.
Hannah Smith
I loved it.
Pasha Eaton
Thanks for listening.
Hannah Smith
We'll be back next week.
Pasha Eaton
If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is the knife at Exactly Right Me. Or you can follow us on Instagram henifepodcast or blueskyenifepodcast.
Hannah Smith
This has been an Exactly Right production, hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith.
Pasha Eaton
And me, Peisha Eaton. Our producers are Tom Breyfogle and Alexis Amorosi.
Hannah Smith
This episode was mixed by Tom Breyfogle.
Pasha Eaton
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Hannah Smith
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
Pasha Eaton
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
Hannah Smith
Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.
Pasha Eaton
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light, ultra powerful.
Hannah Smith
And built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance.
Pasha Eaton
It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa.
Morgan
This thing moves.
Pasha Eaton
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@lenovo.com Lenovo Lenovo unlock.
Hannah Smith
AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon.
Pasha Eaton
Powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
Morgan
Hi, I'm Morgan. I have three kids. I have an IQ of 160. I work with the cops.
Sam Bowman
You're a cop?
Morgan
No, but they do sign my paychecks. Okay. Caitlin Olsen returns in High Potential, the number one drama.
Paul Marquardt
She was abducted.
Pasha Eaton
You knew that already, didn't you?
Morgan
Yeah, I thought it'd be nice to let you have this one. And one of the best new crime procedurals.
Pasha Eaton
You're waiting on me to leave so you can poke around without a warrant, aren't you? Yeah.
Morgan
High potential. New Tuesdays, 10, 9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. This is Andrea gunning from Betrayal. I want to take a moment to talk about something that impacts how we feel every day. Our gut health. If you've been dealing with sluggish digestion, constant fatigue, brain fog, trouble losing weight or poor sleep, your gut may need some extra care. Your gut plays a vital role in your overall well being because scientists now say it's the foundation of your vitality and long term health. That's where Bioma comes in. This novel supplement has everything you need for a healthy and thriving gut. With every serving, you get prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics that are science backed and third party tested so you can enjoy comfortable digestion, boundless energy, better focus and restful sleep, and even smoother weight management when following a healthy lifestyle. Just take two tiny bioma capsules each morning before breakfast and start feeling your best. Visit Bioma Health and use Code betrial to get 15% off your first order. That's Byoma Health code betrial for 15% off.
Podcast: The Knife: A True Crime Podcast
Hosts: Pasha Eaton & Hannah Smith
Episode Date: October 9, 2025
Main Theme: The Fascinating and Layered Story of the Trenchcoat Robbers – America’s Notorious Bank Robbing Duo
In this Off Record episode, co-hosts Pasha Eaton and Hannah Smith deep dive into the true story of the “Trenchcoat Robbers”—a notorious pair of bank robbers who terrorized banks across the U.S. for decades. Through engaging narration, in-depth investigative research, interviews with a retired ATF agent crucial to their capture, and heartfelt perspective from the daughter of one of the robbers, the episode uncovers not just the deeds of the criminals but also the far-reaching ripple effects of their choices.
The tone is clever, empathetic, and often wry/reflective. Both hosts weave facts with personality: drawing out moral nuance, humanizing all involved, and lingering on “gray areas,” particularly through Sam’s moving memories.
This is a quintessential Knife episode—empathetic, solution-oriented, and humanizing. Through a rich, well-structured narrative, listeners gain a sense of the complexity, consequence, and generational impact of headline-making crimes. The episode refuses to settle for hero/villain binaries, instead drawing out shades of gray and weaving personal stories into the larger fabric of true crime.
For further reading/listening: